His holiness, the meddling geopolitician.

At this issue's press time, the war in Iraq is but a week old. Today's headlines include news about a Baghdad market where 17 civilians are believed to have been killed, concerns about fiercer-than-expected Iraqi resistance and higher-than-expected American casualties, speculations about the impending battle in Baghdad, and reports of still-growing international condemnation of the U.S.-led invasion. Earlier this week, some reporters had filed "home front" human-interest stories about how at Mass on the first Sunday of war, U.S. Catholics had been struggling to come to grips with the moral and faith implications of this military intervention.

Some Catholic leaders are now joining the customary war-time call to rally behind our president and troops. Yes, all of us should fervently pray for the soldiers our government has sent into harm's way (just as we must fervently pray for Mussef, Nada, Amal, Isra, and all the children of Iraq as well as for all civilians, combatants, and decision-makers on all sides of this war). But no, this does not mean that we should now brush aside the deep doubts about the morality of this endeavor so passionately expressed by Pope John Paul II and the overwhelming majority of the world's Catholic and other religious leaders.

In one of those striking "coincidences" that often mark the timing of the lectionary, the second reading on that first Sunday of war proclaimed the "stumbling block" and "foolishness" of Christ crucified: "For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength" (1 Cor. 1:25). When the pope forcefully warned against entering into this war--the ultimate pursuit of "human strength"--he very quickly became a fool to U.S. pundits who ridiculed him as a "Saddam enabler," a "meddling geopolitician," and one of those obsolete "Euro rulers." And as I listened to that reading, I also had to think of and pray for the dozens of U.S. peace activists who have "foolishly" put their lives on the line by going to Baghdad.

It is true, as the U.S. Catholic bishops said at the outbreak of the war, that there are "no easy answers. War has serious consequences; so could the failure to act." But when the pope, who has lived through and experienced the terror of war firsthand, speaks of his duty to say, "War never again!" he does not naively advocate doing nothing. Instead, he has a realistic sense of how "war threatens the fate of humanity."

What then are U.S. Catholics to do in this hour of war? As Brian Doyle in this month's Examined Life column (page 50) recommends, we should pray without ceasing, heal what we can heal, love with all our might, and speak our minds.